We Grew
by oh help
Summary: Dean/Seamus ficlets written with the OTP Boot Camp prompts. All in the same universe and canon-compliant :: 24. Morbid: Seamus loses faith in Harry
1. Acrid

**1\. Acrid**

Seamus was not one of the somber ones, not immediately. He was one of those who celebrated rather than mourned. Ended up at the Hufflepuff table with half the D.A. and led a raucous victory song. It might have seemed in rather poor taste to you, with the bodies of the dead just a room away, but you were too glad for an excuse to smile to think of anything else. He leaned over and hugged you, clumsily and laughing all the way through, and didn't care who saw.

"So, Dean," he asked, grinning broadly, "what do you plan to do, now that you're free to exist?"

Just being there, with him, with everyone, was enough for you.

By the time the mid-afternoon sun hung over the ceiling of the Great Hall, you were asleep on your feet. You asked him how long it had been since he slept, and he couldn't remember. And then you pulled him upstairs, stumbling in fatigue and stubbing your toes on chunks of staircase as you went.

The Fat Lady smiled at you gratefully before the portrait hole swung open, ever so pleased that you were alright.

The exhaustion had replaced the high of triumph in him, and he was solemn then. You knew better than to say a word. He didn't talk about things like these, bad things. Instead you held him. He smelled like sour sweat and something on fire.

"Come," you murmured, leading him away.

You slipped his torn robes over his shoulders and let them fall to the bathroom floor, and began to unbutton his shirt. "Dean," he mumbled, "You know I'm not that sort..."

"Not that," you said. "You're filthy. It's awful."

He let out a lazy laugh. "I s'pose I am."

You held your hand under the shower until the water was warm and then helped him in. He didn't say anything when you joined him. Just let you rinse the ashes from his hair, the dried blood from his face and body. You ran your fingers in numb horror over his dark bruises and half-healed cuts.

"Look at you," you said, not really intending to speak aloud.

"Doesn't matter, really," he replied. "I'm alive."

You leaned your face against the top of his head, the water flowing down into your eyes. "You are."

And you stood there and let the shower wash the war from you.


	2. Agitated

2\. Agitated

Seamus's heel is moving rapidly up and down, never low enough to touch the compartment floor, his whole leg shaking, really.

This isn't unusual in itself. He's a fidgety bloke, Seamus is, and he taps his feet like this without realizing it a lot of the time. It's his face that troubles Dean: a particular serious look that, combined with the movement, gives a distinct impression of nervousness. He's barely said a thing for ten minutes. Just watched the countryside streak by on the other side of the window.

It's been four years. Dean likes to think he _knows _when something's up.

"Everything okay?" he tries, not expecting much of an answer. "Bad summer?"

Seamus shrugs. "Dunno."

"You don't look alright, mate."

For a moment, Seamus seems to fill up, with words or emotion or something of the sort, and then he bursts out, "It's Harry."

"What about Harry?" Dean asks in confusion.

"Haven't you been reading the-" Seamus shakes his head and looks back at him, eyes almost pleading. "D'you believe him? About You-Know-Who?"

It is Dean's turn to shrug. "I guess so, yeah."

"Really?" Seamus's eyebrows come together. "But... There's so much that doesn't add up, Dean... Not to mention how it's all just completely mad. How could You-Know-Who possibly come back? And why would he..." The last part is spoken in a horrified whisper: "_Cedric_?"

"I don't know," Dean replies. "But I trust Harry. He's my mate. Don't reckon he'd just lie about something like this." He thinks a little. "Much less Dumbledore."

"Everyone knows Dumbledore's going senile."

"Do you think so?"

Seamus squares his shoulders. "Doesn't matter. I'm still not convinced Harry's not a nutter."

"I guess we'll see," says Dean quietly.

There is a full, suffocating moment of silence between them.

"So, what?" Seamus asks. "Are we gonna fight?"

"What?" Dean looks honestly perplexed. "Why would we fight?"

The rush of affection that runs through Seamus is so strong that he is momentarily dizzied. "I... Never mind. Was your summer alright?"


	3. Breathless

3\. Breathless

Dean remembers when he didn't fly. When hovering four feet above the ground was quite enough for him, thank you.

Seamus would take him out sometimes, when all his bottled-up growing-boy energy needed someplace to go. He was a showoff then. He'd swoop and dive and zoom about, and he would laugh at him. "You're not tellin' me you're scared of heights?"

"No more than's reasonable," Dean would mumble.

...

Seamus kept insisting. "We've got to train you up before you come round this summer," he said, as he dragged him out to the Quidditch pitch one evening with a pair of the school Cleansweeps in hand. "There's never anyone to toss a Quaffle with, except Fergus when he's around, and he doesn't play fair. I'm not about to pass up the opportunity."

They kicked off from the ground and rose, Seamus fast and laughing, Dean more slowly. He watched the grass fall away below him. The height was dizzying; he forgot momentarily to breathe.

"It won't help if you look _down_, Dean," said Seamus in amusement. "Even Muggles know that." But he couldn't stop it. He couldn't set aside the intense awareness of how far he had to fall.

...

They laid awake in their tent at the World Cup, pulling apart the match, discussing the intricacies of Quidditch strategy.

Seamus hesitated briefly, as he sometimes did before giving a perhaps-strange compliment. "I reckon you'd be a good player, if you flew. You get things. Gryffindor'd be better for it."

"We've got Harry," Dean said with a grin, "we don't need strategy."

"Well, still, wouldn't hurt."

"Liking Quidditch doesn't mean I'd be any good at it, though," he said. "I'm sure most of the people here are shite fliers."

"I guess so," said Seamus.

"Maybe I should start a club," said Dean thoughtfully into the darkness. "For sports on the ground."

Seamus scoffed. "Who would ever want to join that?"

"I don't know." Dean tucked his arms behind his head. "Muggle schools have tons of teams for different things. With Hogwarts it's Quidditch or you're out."

"We've just brought you to _this_," said Seamus, incredulous, "and you're still on about Muggle stuff?"

Dean shrugged. "I like what I like."

...

Dean remembers telling Ginny Weasley in embarrassment that he would love to go flying with her, honestly, but he wasn't very good with a broom. He remembers that being his petty sixteen-year-old reason to finally learn.

"You won't play so much as a game of catch with me for years," grumbled Seamus, "but the second a girl asks you to—"

"Shut up," Dean interrupted, bouncing on the balls of his feet with impatience (or maybe nervousness). "Just show me how to fly this stupid thing."

...

"It's not that you're a bad flier, I think," was Seamus's diagnosis. "It's nerves."

"I could've told you that."

"Well, I'm sorry, mate. I can teach you to play Quidditch, and how not to crash into things or fall out of the sky, but I can't make you less of a—"

"Coward?"

"It's definitely not as bad as it is in your head," said Seamus. "Maybe if you, you know, stopped complaining and gave it a real shot?"

Dean looked away and grumbled, "I'm not _complaining_..."

"Whatever."

...

"Just chase it. Don't think about anything else."

"I get it, Seamus." He was breathing quickly in anticipation, moving very slightly up and down as he hovered. "Tell me when."

Seamus pulled his arm back and they locked eyes. He took his time, testing the weight of the Quaffle in his hand, and then he threw it with as much strength as he could muster and Dean leaned forward and followed.

That time he was going faster than ever, too fast to focus on the ground if he had looked. But that time he didn't. There was the ball and its arc over the pitch and after a few moments he didn't even have to determinedly ignore his height and his speed and all the other hazards because that was all there was. The Quaffle began to fall and he dove to catch up... He was almost there, he _was _there...

It slipped through his fingers and bounced onto the grass. Dean gripped his broom tightly as he was thrown forward by his clumsy stop, pausing to take several deep breaths. He had turned to shout back something like _I think I did alright _when he was nearly knocked from his broom by a wild midair hug.

Seamus clapped him awkwardly on the back when he remembered to be appropriate. They watched each other for a moment, unsure, before breaking once again into foolish grins.

"What now?" asked Dean.

"We teach you to catch," said Seamus. "You're awful."


	4. Battered

4\. Battered

It had become a ritual. The offender would serve their sentence, and the rest would wait up until they returned to the tower. They would all huddle together on boys' vacant beds and try to heal the hurt as best they could. It was more a gesture of kindness than anything; there wasn't much to be done about the Cruciatus curse.

As time went on they got better: at bracing themselves, at getting through it. There was less hurt to heal, and more anger to be let out. More defiant plans to be talked over, more furious resolve to be shared and steeled. But still they kept to the boys' dormitory. Even in Gryffindor Tower, it was impossible to know who would hear, or who would tell.

Seamus scanned the common room as he gripped the edge of the portrait hole to keep himself upright, but he knew where they were. He ignored the stares as he crossed the room, chin up.

"What happened to your face?" gasped Lavender when he had struggled up the last step.

"Can you see the bruises already?" He remained standing in the doorway, wanting to fall into bed but sure it would hurt. "I don't care about those. It's my chest that... How do you tell if you've broken a rib?"

Parvati's eyebrows had come together in concern. "You have to go to the Hospital Wing."

"D'you think Pomfrey'd even be allowed?" wondered Neville.

Ginny, lying against the pillow of what had been her brother's bed, snorted. "Doubt it."

"Yeah." The unbruised side of Seamus's face twisted into a bitter smile. "I've got to suffer for my Muggle-loving mouth, haven't I?"

"You haven't told us what happened," said Parvati, softly.

He was ushered over to a bed by Neville and gingerly sat. "It started out like every time, you know, but I guess I was being more of a pain in the arse than usual. And Amycus went mad, really mad, screaming all over the place and-" He paused to slowly draw in a painful breath. "I think they know they've got to do better, if they want to keep us in line. But he's not that creative, that one, and I figure he didn't know what to do, so he just-" Here, he mimed a wild slash of a wand. "Threw me around a bit. Into the walls, and desks and things."

There were faint murmurs of sympathy, but above them, hesitantly, there was Lavender. "I told you to keep your mouth shut."

"What?" demanded Seamus acidly.

"I'm sorry, Seamus, I just mean, if you'd stop provoking them so much..."

"What do you want me to do, Lav?" he snapped. "Do you want me to do what they say? Write all my essays about how Muggles are subhuman filth, and put up with them making examples of twelve-year-olds?" He gave a sharp, angry laugh. "Hell, I can swear allegiance to bloody You-Know-Who if you say so-"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," she interrupted, the coldness in her tone a perfect counter to his. "There's standing up for what's right, and then there's being stupid. The way you talk to them sometimes, for no reason... It's reckless. It's like you _want _this to happen to you."

Parvati was pleading them then to calm down, but Seamus had no intentions of leaving the conversation unfinished. "What, I'm asking for it?"

"You _are_," Lavender said. "It's not funny, it's going to get you _killed_."

At any other time that could have been hyperbole, and he was almost inclined to laugh, but there was silence in the group as the very real possibility sank in. That perhaps it was only a matter of time.

"I could," said Seamus in a low voice, into the quiet. "Do what they say, I mean. Join up with the Death Eaters and everything. And they'd have me, because I've got wizard blood and I can prove it." His words caught in his throat, and it was some time before he could speak again. "It's not fair," he finally said. "That I've got that choice, when there are people out there being rounded up for the way they were born. I don't deserve it."

The rest of them shared a meaningful look around him but it was Ginny who said it, in a manner so tender it made him feel pitied. "Do you think... Is this about Dean?"

"It's not about fucking _Dean_," he spat, almost regretting his tone but not quite caring enough.

Her expression shifted quickly to contempt. "There's no need to be so-"

Neville cut them off with a sudden sternness. "Fighting with each other won't help anyone." He looked pointedly at Seamus, who had been cowed into silence but was obviously still seething.

Parvati pulled them back to the original conversation. "There's got to be something in the library on healing spells. We'll look in the morning." She placed a tentative hand on Seamus's shoulder. He didn't acknowledge her. As the girls solemnly left for their dormitories, he lay down and closed his eyes, not even bothering to change.

On the neighboring bed, Neville sat cross-legged, watching him with worry. "If you… Y'know, if you ever want to talk…"

A few years ago he'd never have imagined sharing his insecurities with anyone, never mind Neville Longbottom, but everything was in the open now. Their solidarity didn't have room for things like secrecy or pride. He considered it: talking things over with him would probably help. It had helped before.

But right now he didn't want to. He had no desire to discuss the complexities of feelings he didn't want to feel. He just wanted to forget it all.

He clenched his teeth against the ache that pounded through his entire body, trying to put it out of his mind so he could get some sleep as quickly as possible. "Not now, Nev."


	5. Calm

5\. Calm

"Dean?"

The voice is little more than a hoarse whisper and muffled through the bed-hangings, but there's really no need to wonder who's asking for him, or why. He rolls over onto his back, giving up any pretense of drowsing. "Seamus?"

"I can't sleep..." He pauses, as if he considers ending the sentence there, but Dean waits for him to finish the thought. "Something's happening, I know it."

There's really no useful reply to this, is there?

They've been through this enough – Harry and company dashing off to do something important in the middle of the night – that it seems like there should be some sort of protocol. _It'll be fine_, he wants to say. _It always has been_. And then the more callous follow-up: _And if it isn't, it's not as if there's anything we can do_. The defeatism in saying so makes him itch, but it's true. There's no course of action but to go back to bed and wait to hear rumors in the morning.

But those other times, that thing that won them the house cup in first year and the Chamber of Secrets and whatever they'd been doing with Professor Lupin on the night of the full moon, there hadn't been a murderous dark wizard come back from the dead. Last time the prospect of something so far-reaching it would touch them hadn't been this _present_. It is around them in the air now, in the government's vehement denial of danger and the study group they called an army. The worry that keeps Seamus awake tonight is not just for a few friends but for everyone, the fear of a tipping point into war.

"It'll be fine," says Dean, lacking and helpless.

Sheets rustle and the floorboards creak, and his friend slips between his bed curtains. Fair-haired and white-faced in pale grey pajamas, Seamus is ghostly in the dark.

"You don't think…" He sits at the end of the bed and tucks up his feet like a child. "You don't figure they could be coming after us?"

"What?"

"First it was Ron's dad, and now Harry has another, I dunno, fit or something, and no one's seen Neville since, what if something bad's happened—"

Dean cuts him off, stretching a hand to him over the blankets. "Calm down, mate."

"But what if—"

"You're being seriously paranoid."

Seamus leans his head against the bedpost. A deep, long breath becomes a deep, long sigh. "Stupid, yeah."

Dean's reflex as a friend is to tell him he isn't, but that sentiment has seemed to become more useless with the years as well.

"Would you mind a bit of chess?" asks Seamus, making a respectable attempt to recover his usual nonchalance. "You know, something to keep busy until we pass out?"

"Sounds alright," Dean says. The entire year has been a struggle against dealing with things by avoidance, but it is half past two o' clock in the morning and distraction seems as good a solution as any.

He summons Seamus's old chess set from on top of the wardrobe. They arrange the game on the sheets between them and in time they settle with their heads on either side of the board, bodies curled around to fit on the bed like a drowsy, teenage yin-yang. No words pass between them anymore. Hermione charmed the opinionated chessmen silent before the exams for arguing too loud and giving her a headache, so the only sounds are each order about the board – and the occasional snigger when one of the pieces with arms makes a rude gesture in return for a poor move.

They play by wandlight with the curtains drawn, enclosing themselves in a sanctuary away from the empty beds.

...

The morning is chaos in whispers. No one seems to want to say anything too loudly. Dean knows that shock that people get when these things happen; he's seen how stiff his parents go when they watch disasters on the news, he remembers the days after Cedric Diggory. The fear then had been similar. The fear of…whatever people feared when they heard the name "Voldemort," the memory of whatever had happened before.

"It's different," says Lavender softly on the way outside after breakfast, newspaper clutched in her pale hands. "Muggle dark… well, muggles, they don't come back and start attacking people again."

She and Parvati part from them as they step out onto the grounds, rushing over to join a knot of serious-looking Ravenclaw girls. Seamus spares them a last look and his eyes drop to his feet again.

His face had twisted with skepticism as he read the front page over Lavender's shoulder at breakfast. "Do you really think we should trust this?"

The rest of them looked around at each other. Seamus had refused to so much as glance at the Prophet for months in a rather overzealous display of repentance. "I, well…" Parvati was the first to try and answer, but she stumbled a little. "I think if they're changing their tune this much, the Ministry, then they must not be able to deny anything anymore, must they?"

"There could at least be a photograph of _him_, some sort of evidence other than Fudge's useless word—"

"I thought we'd all agreed to stop being stupid and believing what's nicest," snapped Lavender, and that line of conversation had ended there.

Seamus's resultant funk has followed them outside into the pleasant June morning. He makes no attempt to converse, or even acknowledge Dean beside him, and as he wanders toward the lake he looks sort of dazed. Dean keeps to the slow pace. He has long since learned when to speak and when to wait for his friend to, but there is no time when it's best to leave him alone.

"How long do you think it'll be?" asks Seamus eventually, choosing to aim an impotent kick at a dandelion rather than meet Dean's eyes. "Before things really go to Hell, I mean."

"I don't know" Dean replies. "Maybe never. The whole government's going to be trying to stop this, all the aurors, not to mention Dumbledore…"

"But maybe soon, yeah?"

"I could see what Ginny thinks when I see her," he muses. "She'd know better than either of us, but she might not want to say. I probably wouldn't if it were me."

Seamus snorts, and Dean looks up in surprise to see one corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. "Especially not to the bloke she's dated for what, a week?"

Ducking his head to hide the smile of his own that he finds himself fighting, Dean grumbles. "I'm glad poking fun at my personal business is what cheers you up."

Their shoulders bump together, Seamus gives in to silent laughter, and it almost feels like it should on a sunny day after the end of exams.

"Looks like a good day to fly, do you think?" says Dean, leaning his head back to stare up at the sky.

"Could be." Seamus follows suit, then rolls his glance to the side. "We'll make a proper expert of you yet. Angelina Johnson, eat your heart out."

They stand a few more moments on the grassy rise above the lake before heading off to the Quidditch pitch, and they don't talk about Voldemort for a while. The freedom of distraction has to be savored while it still can be.


	6. Carcass

**Ultimate OTP Competition:** _Emotion: Sadness_

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**6\. Carcass**

With Dumbledore it was like the death of the Queen. That was when they knew there was no going back, the end of any hope there'd been that the world would right itself without a fight. It was the killing of a symbol. But _this_, this blow is so much stronger, or it feels that way. Not in its impact on the war or the world but on his own small, selfish heart.

What he had admired the most about Remus Lupin was his dignity, and in death he retains it. He lies still on the floor of the Great Hall, serene and unbloodied between a battered body obscured by Molly Weasley's arms and a young woman with hair tangled in clouds of chartreuse green. The sight of it shocks something deep in him. His old professor had represented competence to him, had been a figure of respect and inspiration, and the thought that he was mortal is shattering.

Dean stares blankly down.

A light hand brushes over his shoulder and he steps back on to Ginny Weasley's foot in his confusion. "Sorry," he mumbles, absurdly, like they'd tried to get through the same classroom door.

"That's alright," she whispers.

"Which one is it?" he asks, slowly. "Your brother?"

"Fred," says Ginny. He hears her take a deep, rattling breath beside him but she doesn't cry. Maybe she can't anymore, or maybe that's just how she is. They meet eyes for a while but he can't bring himself to open his mouth again. Speech seems so frivolous now.

"Can you help?" she asks.

His helpless disorientation must show on his face because she presses her lips together and sighs in sympathy. "It's okay."

He shakes his head heavy and slow rather than look her in the eyes. "I know I barely knew him but… It's so unfair I can't stand it." The body has drawn his eyes again, magnetically. He can't stop looking into Lupin's peaceful face. "He was so happy, he'd just had a baby… Someone will have to tell his wife…"

Ginny makes a soft sound of pain and when he looks over to her, worried, she just waves a shaking hand toward the green-haired girl. "Dean, she's his wife."

It dizzies him like a physical blow. Ginny grabs his hand as he wavers. All he can think of is the swell of joy he'd felt that night at Shell Cottage when he found out that Professor Lupin had married _Dora Tonks_, that they'd called their baby _Ted; _how happy he'd been that people he so desperately wanted the best for had found each other. And now they'd lost everything in a matter of months.

"We have to win it now," says Ginny with a cold resolve. "We have to make sure they all died for something."

"Where's Harry?" asks Dean.

"I don't know."

"You don't think he's—he's gone? To the forest?"

She shakes her head quickly. "He wouldn't." He hopes she is right.

"Dean—" His name comes from somewhere in the thick voice he's been needing to hear and he whips his head around, searching. "—Is that you?"

"It's me," he calls weakly.

Seamus grasps his hand with both of his own and rests his forehead in the curve of his shoulder. Ginny squeezes his other hand and melts away.

"Are you okay?" asks Seamus.

"I'm fine." He draws back and Dean can see fresh blood soaking his white shirt across the stomach. Another chill pierces his chest. "Are you?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah." Seamus gives a slightly manic laugh. "We were trying to put Lavender right, but I don't think I was helping much, I wasn't really keeping my head…"

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, unable to imagine what could have happened to Lavender Brown for her to lose that much blood.

But Seamus has noticed the bodies before them now, and he clutches Dean's waist, pulling himself closer. His eyes rake over Lupin, rest on Fred. "Oh, no… Oh, no…"

"Yeah," mumbles Dean.

"It… It doesn't make sense. How am I...when they…"

As they stand together he looks down at Lupin and Dora's hands, curled and unmoving inches apart, and wonders how it happened. Who was first, which of them had to live those moments or minutes knowing the other was gone. Whether they'd even been anywhere near each other at the time.

He isn't sure which sounds worse; if he should stay away from Seamus until all this is over or do all he can not to let him leave his sight.


	7. Drawn

**Ultimate OTP Competition:** Action: one half of your pairing is hiding under the bed

* * *

**7\. Drawn**

When he returns to the dormitory it is empty, but he can hear the shower running. He kicks off his shoes and sets his wand on the bedside table before noticing Dean's things spilled across his bedspread, his shirt over the footboard and trousers on the floor.

This exact mundane situation has probably happened dozens of times but something makes it weird now. It's like he's alone with Dean, which he hasn't been in about a thousand years. Seamus glances toward the bathroom door and bounces a little nervously on his toes. It's like being alone with him, only he doesn't know, which just makes him feel intrusive and uncomfortable.

A red book spilling out of Dean's schoolbag grabs his eye, and an insatiable curiosity grabs his chest. He's drawn forward and pulls it all the way out. He knows that looking through other people's things without asking is rude, but it's like he can't stop himself.

This is Dean's fault, really, if you think about it because have they said more than two words to each other in as many days? He's always doing something now. Homework or Quidditch practice or snogging Ginny Weasley or what the fuck ever. If he actually spent time with his friends then maybe they wouldn't have to rummage around his stuff like desperate losers.

(This is definitely a desperate loser thing to do, of course, no matter who's to blame, but by this point Seamus has made his peace with it. He has too much of his mother in him and poor self-control. He'd probably read Dean's diary if he kept one.)

He opens the sketchbook and flips through to the first blank pages. Dean has had this one since September and it is still half unused. He used to go through them faster than his school parchment, but maybe he doesn't have time anymore. Or maybe it's just dropping History of Magic that did it. He's more a doodler than a deliberate artist, Seamus thinks, and most of it always happened during worthless classes.

Sure enough, the most recent page is a muddle of absolute bullshit. There are a lot of intersecting lines and some cartoonish snails. He finds himself chuckling. Shouldn't have expected anything more profound or insightful than this.

He continues to turn the pages back through patterns and scribbled-over things, a small smile growing on his face, until he finds a delicate portrait that makes him pause.

Dean sometimes complains that when he draws people, they end up better-looking than they are in real life and this always made Seamus, whose drawings of people look like potatoes with hair, want to scoff, but now he sort of understands. It is clearly supposed to be Ginny. She's wearing her hair the same way and covered in freckles dotted in with soft pencil, but her generically pretty face lacks an essential Ginny-ness.

It's obvious he tried. Her eyes sparkle; she wears a confident smile like the bold, stunning girl she is. Seamus doesn't really want to look at it for long but his brain doesn't make the connection to turn the page.

The sound of a doorknob turning makes him jump and he realizes in horror that the shower is no longer on. Though he has made peace with his questionable decision, he hasn't made peace with Dean finding out about it, so he slams the sketchbook shut and throws himself down behind the bed.

He regrets this choice immediately, obviously.

The bathroom door opens and Dean's feet creak around the wooden floor. Seamus starts to edge underneath the bed. The decision to hide can't really be un-made now without looking like a massive idiot. All he can do is hide better.

"Fu—Seamus!"

His head bumps into the edge of Dean's bedframe.

"What are you doing?"

"Sorry—I'm really sorry—" Seamus rolls over onto his back between their beds. "I just panicked..."

He opens his eyes in spite of his shame. Dean is standing over him in his underwear, his face incredulous. "Why?"

"I was just looking at your drawings," mutters Seamus.

Dean's eyes flick to the red sketchbook, out on the middle of the bed, clearly not where he'd left it. "Oh." He looks thoughtful for a few seconds, trying to come up with some response to this ridiculousness. "You could've asked, I don't care."

"Sorry."

His mouth twitches like he's tempted to laugh, but restrains himself. "Get up, mate."

Seamus heaves himself up from the floor as if he weighs a ton.

"Just wanted to see if you'd drawn anything interesting lately," he says, because he feels compelled to keep justifying himself and can't keep from babbling something inane. "You know, Snape in drag, something like that."

"Well, I figure we could just get Neville up against a boggart if that's what you're after," says Dean with a weak laugh. Seamus wholeheartedly appreciates the effort to extend his lame joke instead of rolling his eyes.

He watches him put on his pajamas, pensively, a low frustration smoldering in his stomach. Something about it just isn't fair. Dean has developed into a nice, normal person who draws pictures for girls while he's become the sort who hides under beds like a fucking moron.

Seamus was never surprised that Dean was the one who got the girlfriend. Dean with the social skills and talent and handsome face and broad shoulders, of course it would be him. And he's happy for him, mostly. What bothers him is that he has nothing but Dean, that he's not good at sharing him.


	8. Sin

**Ultimate OTP Competition: **Word count: 782 (according to my word count app, anyway)

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**8\. Sin**

Nora always took care of the presents. Birthdays, holidays, what have you. He couldn't shop very well for a son who wanted broomsticks and weird sweets and books like "Bessie Barrow and the Murder at the Dragon Reserve."

This year, like the last few, Seamus just mumbles and shrugs whenever she asks what he'd like for Christmas and she says it worries her. Part of him tends to dismiss things like this because absolutely everything their son does worries Nora. Him, he likes to see the improvements rather than the lingering pain.

"Jack," she says, "you don't understand what he went through."

He understands what it's like being powerless while the people he loves live in fear, which sounds to him like what Seamus went though. But she's probably right. Nora has a relationship with him that he doesn't; he tells her more and Jack's used to not understanding. It seems like every bit of his boy has become inaccessible to him as he's grown.

All he can do is watch him when he can, and the Seamus he sees today is better than the one a year ago. He flits around the kitchen to Christmas carols, sticking his fingers in the sauce and making his mother laugh.

The telephone rings. He picks it up. The voice on the other end of the line is deep and warm; he recognizes it immediately. "Hello there, Dean," he says.

"Hi, Mr. Finnigan." They're technically equals now, that can call each other by name, but the boy has always been a picture of politeness. "How is everyone?"

He peeks into the kitchen. Nora is beaming as she swats Seamus away from the berries.

"They're great," says Jack. "I'll put him on for you."

His wife snaps a dishtowel at their son in a fit of giggles and God, it's beautiful to see them like this again. "We'll never have dinner if you keep bothering me! Get out of here!" She swishes her wand and dissolves into laughter over the counter.

Seamus trips out of the kitchen under a hail of cranberries, and Jack hands him the phone.

He watches him grin into the receiver and wish Dean a happy Christmas Eve, watches him lean back against the wall, twisting the phone cord between his fingers like it's another one of those too-long summers. He busies himself straightening the shelves and pretends not to be paying attention.

"I know," Seamus says. "Look, I'm just not... I know... Oh, we'll talk later then... L—You too."

"Still living with that Dean, then?" Jack asks when he's hung up.

"Yeah," mumbles Seamus.

"You know, save up right and you could have your own place in no time."

"My own place?"

"You don't want to live with some other bloke your whole life, do you?"

Now, Jack likes Dean Thomas well enough. Thinks highly of him, apart from his taste in football teams. But he also remembers being twenty and itching to be his own man. A bit of independence, he thinks, would do Seamus good. Some purpose, some self-esteem.

"Erm..." Seamus stares at his feet for a long time and like a flash Jack's seized with guilt. He must have touched unknowingly upon one of the million things he doesn't understand, a war thing, some needing-people thing to which he can't relate. If he'd been through hell like they had then of course he'd want someone nearby. Someone close and kind who got it, someone like what Dean is to his son.

"Sorry," he says softly. "I didn't mean t—"

"I'm in love with him," Seamus bursts out.

His eyes are screwed shut like he's expecting to be struck but Jack feels as if he's the one who's been clocked about the head. "What?"

"That's what's happening." Seamus opens his eyes but still won't look him in the face. "We're living together as people who're, y'know, living together."

"But you're not... Like that."

"Well, I don't know."

His shoulders are now squared defiantly. Jack searches his memory for anything, weird looks at people on the street or slurs against football players on the other team, anything he could've done to make his boy feel like he needs to defend himself.

"He's in love with you too, then?" he slowly asks.

"That's what he says."

And he claps Seamus's shoulder. "Well, there you go."

He expects the thought of it to put him off but he finds that it seems right. There's no one more suited to love Seamus, no one who could know him better.

As he thinks back over holidays and visits, he wonders if perhaps they've only just now found the words for what they always were.


	9. Whisper

**9\. Whisper**

This was Harry they were talking about. His friend Harry. Best-mates-with-a-Muggleborn-and-blood-traitor Harry, saved-the-school Harry, _defeated-You-Know-Who_ Harry. When Dean rolled his eyes at Ernie Macmillan, Seamus scoffed too.

But falling asleep with Harry just feet away felt like a risk he couldn't take.

He didn't feel safe. Or, well, he didn't feel like Dean was safe, which he supposed was different but felt kind of the same. Even though it was _Harry_, there was a chance, wasn't there, that the weird coincidences meant something and the rumors were true. That was enough to keep him awake at night.

When stories of things that crept and killed used to scare him, his Mam would tuck him in beside her. "This way if anything tries to get you while you're sleeping," she said, "I'm right here and I'll feel it too. And I'll protect you." He would sleep with her arms around him and his head on her pillow.

Dean had closed his curtains. Seamus rolled over to look, his imagination grabbing at his worries and running with them. Behind that drape of cloth Dean could be scared too. Or he could be stone solid like Justin and Colin and Mrs. Norris. Or he could be dead. If he just moved over that three feet, Seamus thought, he could sleep with his head on Dean's pillow, and maybe rest easy.

He was twelve years old now and too old for that shit. He couldn't slip into his parents' bed anymore, he knew better than to touch Dean.

He tried to reassure himself. They'd lived with Harry a year and a half already and nothing bad had happened. He slept here every night and drifted off fine, Dean always woke up fine. But still he kicked around, tossed and turned. There was nothing like that physical touch, his body nestled against someone else's, to calm him.


	10. Enamoured

**Minor Character Appreciation Drabble Tag**: Dean Thomas; fragile

* * *

**10\. Enamoured**

You're on a date. She's a Muggle, friend of a friend from class, and _god _is she cool. Dressed all in black, legs for miles. A fleur-de-lis tattoo on the back of her neck that you're positively longing to kiss.

She twirls her knife on the edge of her empty plate and it's making you anxious. You don't have anything to say to make her look at you. You're boring, so boring. Imagine her telling her friends about this later, giggling about that poor idiot who would only talk about the weather. You pull down and re-roll your sleeves as you try to dream up a strategy, a game plan. These things, they take work. Romance is just trying to keep them looking at you, a stream of temporary little victories, altogether a fragile euphoria.

"So you're an artist?" she asks.

"Erm, I don't know," you fumble, caught by surprise.

She arches her perfect dark eyebrows and drawls, "I thought you were literally going to school…for art…"

"Oh, er, yeah," you correct yourself, "I suppose, it's just that _artist _seems like a bit strong a word? I'm really more of a… I mean, not a _hobbyist_, but it's not…"

_Disaster _may be the word you're looking for.

Your insides flutter. You know the butterflies well now. The dizzy desperation, the lightheaded joy from the barest smile. You've always fallen deep and easy.

It's addictive but it's misery; love is absolutely _miserable_. You hate to put your self-worth and happiness in the hands of some other person with whims and ideas of their own. Fuck her, you want to say, why should she make you feel like nothing? But it's the respect. It's why you cared so much what Professor Lupin thought of your essays and whether Ginny Weasley wanted to kiss you; you want the people you think highly of to think the same of you in return.

You fold your napkin the other way out and fantasize about being home. Already you're exhausted. It's such a relief to have a refuge, and someone who looks at you without you trying. You'll tell him how lousy this went and he'll tell you you care too much.

Seamus says he's never been in love. You think he's kind of lucky.


	11. Fascinated

**11\. Fascinated**

"Will he bring his owl?"

His parents didn't like having unusual birds hanging around their house so he and Seamus mostly talked on the telephone now. Beth missed Eithne the barred owl terribly.

"Probably not," said Dean. "It's not _his _owl, it's his _family_'s owl. His mum might need to send a letter." He wanted to add something about how nobody took their pets just to stay with their friends anyway, but he knew for a fact Beth would carry her gerbils everywhere she went if she could.

"Actually, I've been meaning to ask you," said his mother from the other end of the table, "you said that he'd be coming by _fireplace_?"

"Yeah."

She hesitated. "But wh…what exactly does that _mean_?"

"It's how they travel," Dean explained. "You put something in the fire, some powder or something, and then you say where you want to go, and you come out of the fireplace there."

"So he'll be coming out of our fireplace?"

"Like in Mary Poppins!" piped up Livy enthusiastically.

"That doesn't seem very clean," said his father, looking skeptical. "Won't soot get everywhere?"

Dean shrugged. "I dunno. It's magic."

His father sighed hopelessly. "Well, if it does make a mess, it's your job to vacuum."

"Do you think he could take us somewhere with the fireplace?" asked Beth.

"I dunno," said Dean, feeling himself grow frustrated. "And don't ask him too many questions, alright? Seamus isn't a zoo animal."

"It's just cool to have a real wizard stay with us," said Sara. Dean rolled his eyes over to her. She was a year away from eleven and waiting on it with bated breath, even though Professor Sprout had told the girls three years ago not to get their hopes up.

"_I'm _a real wizard," he said.

"Don't use that tone with your sister," said his mother. "You know what she means."

...

His family was quite taken with Seamus. He let Beth's gerbils scramble over his hands, read Livy books and politely answered endless questions about his family. "Don't bother him," snapped Dean when Sara asked if he had to come all the way to London to take the Hogwarts Express, but Seamus shrugged and said he didn't mind.

Dean led him upstairs to his bedroom at night. "I'm sorry about them," he said, once his parents in the kitchen couldn't hear. "My family's so embarrassing."

"It's okay," said Seamus. "I like them." He paused and sheepishly sucked in his lips as they reached the landing. "I like big families."

"That's because you haven't got one," mumbled Dean.

Seamus followed him into his room, setting down his backpack on the floor. "Dunno."

Dean smoothed out his bed covers and pulled them aside, then turned to fish his pajamas out of a drawer. "You can change here, or in the bathroom if you want, I guess."

"Where am I sleeping?" Seamus asked.

"Oh." Dean blinked in surprise. "Oh, er, the bed too, I thought." He cringed at the expression on Seamus's face and hurriedly tried to explain. "That's where we've always had our friends sleep when they stay over, because our house hasn't got that much room, see… But if you don't want—"

"No," said Seamus, "I don't want to be trouble."

"Are you sure—"

"Yeah, Dean," he interrupted, flushing, "just drop it."

"Okay," said Dean.

Seamus eyed the twin bed. "There's room?"

"'Course there's room," Dean replied with a smirk, "you're a midget."

"You watch yourself, mate."

He shook out his pajama shirt and pulled off the one he was wearing, avoiding eye contact. "So where do you usually sleep, when you have sleepovers?" he asked.

Seamus awkwardly looked up at the ceiling. "I've never really had one before."

"Really?"

"Didn't have any wizard friends," he said. "No one around likes Mam very much, because of Dad, and I couldn't have Muggle friends round."

"Oh." Dean quietly buttoned his top. Seamus scoffed softly at the other end of the room, and Dean got the impression he regretted saying anything. "Well, we're going to go to the park tomorrow," he said. "I'll show you where we used to play football."

"Okay."

"And we aren't taking my sisters," he added. "No matter what Mum says."

Seamus smiled. "Sounds alright."


	12. Fear

**12\. Fear**

The wardrobe shook abruptly, and Parvati stepped on his foot as she was startled backward. Professor Lupin gave it a sharp pat. "Nothing to worry about," he said. "There's a boggart in there."

Obviously, this reassured no one. He must have made some outward indication of his discomfort because Dean whispered in his ear, "A what?"

"We found one in the cellar once," Seamus whispered back. "Mam had to call the—"

But Lupin was talking again. Dean hurriedly shushed him.

"So, the first question we must ask ourselves is," the professor was saying, "What _is _a boggart?"

Hermione, predictably, raised her hand to answer. "It's a shape-shifter. It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us the most."

At this Dean's rapt expression became a sort of grimace and he turned to Seamus. He made this face at all manner of ordinary things: turning magazines about to read the swirling text or paging through _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. "Why on _Earth_?" he'd ask. "Is this _real_?" He never really got an answer, just made Seamus question the point of it himself.

Seamus shrugged. Dean faced front again, stiffer this time.

They listened to Professor Lupin coach Neville through confrontation with the boggart, in stitches and teary-eyed by the time he addressed the class at large again. Any apprehension about the lesson was drowned out by their laughter. "I would take all of you to take a moment now to think of the thing that scares you the most," Lupin said, "and imagine how you might force it to look comical…"

The first thought Seamus had was that he was fearless. He was a Gryffindor, of course. He laughed at horror films and hung over high edges so recklessly it drove his parents mad. Dean shot him another quick unsure glance, eyebrows raised, before looking down at his feet like the rest of their classmates. Seamus looked at his shoes too and ran his tongue thoughtfully over his teeth. He couldn't help finding Neville silly. Snape was unpleasant, but wouldn't intimidate him in a dark forest or nothing. He wasn't worthy of being a _greatest fear._ A dark forest on its own would be scarier; anything could come out and kill you.

If something couldn't kill you, after all, what was the point of being scared of it?

All of a sudden he was brought back to last year, when legends of Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets and murderous monster had sent everyone into a state of panic. _That_ had been a worthy fear. A chill crept through his chest as he remembered the powerless terror he'd felt then, similar, he now realized, to the feeling the dementors on the train had caused. A thread of fears that he'd never connected unspooled in his mind: being attacked in his sleep, being bound or shut up someplace, the crying mandrakes, the time he wouldn't go outside at night for weeks after his mam told him of banshees.

Professor Lupin called out, "Everyone ready?"

Seamus's head shot up in panic. He hadn't even decided on a fear, much less thought about how to banish it, but everyone else seemed done. Dean was rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves with determination. Seamus shuffled back along with the rest of them (save Neville), desperately trying to get some last-minute idea together.

Neville also looked unprepared as he waited, wand out. "On the count of three, Neville," Lupin said. "One—two—three—_now_!"

The sight of Snape in a dress was as hilarious as it had sounded, and Seamus forgot his trepidation again, laughing. Parvati was called forward after Neville, and as she approached the boggart it shifted into a grimy, bloodstained mummy.

_Girls_. He was inclined to roll his eyes. Mummies were slow and harmless, just dirty. It seemed like he'd been overthinking this earlier: he didn't need some serious fear, just something he wouldn't want to hang out with—

Professor Lupin shouted over Parvati's applause, "Seamus!"

Lavender and Dean pushed him forward toward the mummy's head, which rolled around to look at him before shifting with its body into an amorphous fog. The fog became a figure, pale with more bone than skin and long, tangled hair. She began to scream.

Seamus knew that it couldn't kill him but he still felt like it would as the screeching rang in his ears. He gripped his wand. Mouth open, he was unable to think of any stupid thing to stop the boggart, not when it was _doing that_…

Dean said something to him, drowned out by the shrill wailing, and he felt an encouraging hand on his back.

The voice was all that could kill you, after all.

He shouted, "_Riddikulus_!"


	13. Hatred

**13\. Hatred**

Dean's sitting on a couch on the edge of the Common Room with a book open in his lap. Seamus trudges up to him, flinging his schoolbag over the back cushions, and swings his feet up on the arm with a groan.

"Detention bad?" asks Dean without looking up.

"Nah, just dead boring," Seamus replies. "McGonagall just had us sorting old _Transfiguration Today_s."

"That's okay then."

With a forceful prod, Dean dots his last full stop on his essay and shakes out the page. Seamus eyes it. "That for Sprout tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Eugh."

"Never thought I'd finish," says Dean with a rueful grin. "You going to get started now then?"

Seamus closes his eyes and sinks back into the couch. "Too late now. I just don't think I'll bother."

"Oh, come on." Dean nudges him with his knee. "I can help, I've got all the passages you need marked."

"Nah."

"Well, fine then," says Dean. "If you hadn't gotten detention then we could've done it together."

Seamus snorts. Dean sighs. He should've known Seamus wouldn't regret it.

"I wish you wouldn't get in fights," he says, looking down at his finished essay instead of Seamus in the face.

"Stick up for you, you mean?" replies Seamus stubbornly.

"Whatever." He had told him not to, but Seamus had drawn his wand anyway. His mum must not have been like Dean's, who sat him down so many times as a child and said "People just say mean things to get a rise. Don't give them the satisfaction of knowing it gets to you."

"Zabini calls you "Mudblood" like he's calling you "tall" or "smart," snaps Seamus. "I don't like it."

"I don't like it either, but he's not worth it, Seamus!"

"He's a sack of shit."

"Then I don't care what he thinks of me."

Seamus, who grew up in the country alone with his mum and dad, never needed to know how to deal with stuff like this. Dean figures, at least. He didn't live in a world that sometimes seemed like it didn't want him.

"It makes me feel better when somebody gets angry about it," says Seamus, in a tone like he's admitting some dark secret.

Dean hesitates. "That's nice," he says. "But try not to be stupid."


	14. Helpless

**14\. Helpless**

The loss of control had been his most almighty fear. Dean changed their lives in a time when it felt like he was drowning in it; ages and ages of just not having enough life in him to make things happen. There were too many hours in a day and too many days in a week and they kept on coming and coming. He watched a lot of television.

Dean was blossoming. He took classes and made friends and went out and came home too late, drunk and giggly. It was almost like he'd never been in a war; but Seamus, the war was all that was left of Seamus.

Some nights they sat together in their flat, playing cards or trying to do crosswords, not knowing enough about either culture to finish the Muggle newspaper's nor the Daily Prophet's. They laughed like the old times. "I live for this," said Dean once, and Seamus was baffled, almost angry at the exaggeration of it. He lived for this. Not Dean, who had other people, and did other things. But all he could do was assume that was the way it was. Dean shared about as much with Seamus as Seamus did with him then.

Dean must have gone through all the wonderings and wantings quietly, on his own, before he said, "I think I'm in love with you."

Seamus had never thought about them that way but Dean got it in his head with that. He spent his period of indecision dreaming of what a romance would make of their friendship, all the things he could say if they could kiss. Whether the things he heard from Dean's old lovers through the wall between their rooms were true.

He didn't imagine he would ever be swept off his feet. He expected that he would be the sweeper, someday. The motion of leaning back into a kiss had just never crossed his mind until he bent like Dean's instinctive other half. So _many _things had never crossed his mind until Dean took him to bed.

_What will the others think of him_, he wondered sometimes, lying facedown with Dean's arm over his back. He didn't think too much of himself. That visceral _wrong_ feeling bubbled in him, like the time he fell asleep on the couch and woke up to Dean giving his boyfriend a blowjob in the kitchen, that _how could he debase himself that way_ kind of disgust. His pathetic life was for the first time a comfort. He was already a weak, sad fucker who washed out of the Aurors; he may as well be taking it up the arse for all anyone cared.

When it was dark in the bedroom and Dean was above him he didn't worry about the soft places around his waist that he pulled at in the mirror or what his mother or his friends might have had to say. Vulnerability didn't scare him. It felt righter than anything.


	15. Indifference

**15\. Indifference**

A long time ago, when he was thirteen and listening to Seamus breathe on the other side of his twin bed, Dean decided that he could kiss him. He thought about it for a while. His heart didn't flutter painfully for his best mate like it did for others, but he knew then that he wouldn't be unhappy loving him, that if Seamus wanted him he would give in.

Seamus would never want him, so he didn't dwell on it.

He grew up and his heart kept doing the shitty flutter thing at people all over the place, his chest constricting in desperation every time they'd walk by. In some perverse way he enjoyed it. That was what he thought romance was: perverse, because it was like hell but wonderful. He enjoyed fucking beautiful people from bars and everything else he was supposed to enjoy. But the effort exhausted him. Coming home to Seamus was like a long sleep, invigorating and easy.

"I live for this," he said, just thinking out loud. Seamus snorted a little, and Dean laughed too, mostly at how God-awful pathetic it was that sitting here with Seamus Finnigan watching television was the highlight of his life. He just pretended to be cool. He wanted to be, with that same powerful desperation with which he wanted to be wanted, but he couldn't keep putting himself through that fucking emotional obstacle course. Everything was too much, except for home. Except for Seamus.

If only love were that easy.

They tell you the stories of fluttering hearts and desperation but they also tell you of _belonging _with someone, of spending the rest of your life with them, and Dean knew he couldn't have a life without Seamus. He decided then that pain and romance be damned. If he wanted what he felt for Seamus to be love, then it would be.

Every affectionate thought he'd ever had for Seamus came back a thousandfold. He thought about kissing him again, stroking his cock in the hazy time before sleep. He could, oh Merlin, he could.

"I think I'm in love with you," said Dean carefully when he couldn't keep it in anymore. He looked away, out the window, so he wouldn't have to see the worst should it happen.

"What?" said Seamus.

"I mean, I want to spend my life with you." Dean began his practiced explanation. "And not just as friends, I want to—"

He considered pulling him into a kiss. It would be so easy, they were so close their knees touched. But he held himself back.

"—I love you."

Seamus asked, "Since when?"

"I don't know," said Dean truthfully. "I've been thinking a lot about love lately, and thinking I might have had a lot of it wrong. Maybe since always."

And Seamus was silent.

"Don't worry," Dean continued, hurriedly before he spoke again. "I don't mean to change things, unless… Well, I know you probably aren't interested." He hesitated, the weight of this last minute coming down on him with horrible force. "It doesn't matter because I'll just be…whatever you need me to be, I don't care. As long as I can be with you."

It was honest. He would be a friend, or a lover, or both or none, or anything that a person could be for Seamus. He had gone on this long loving him in their old way, and he could keep on doing it if it was what suited Seamus best. If he could love him in any way at all, nothing mattered.


	16. Silence is Golden

**16\. Silence is Golden**

They are the last two in the dormitory before breakfast. Seamus has spent too long in the shower and is trying to jam socks onto his damp feet with violent force.

"Do you...want to talk about anything?" asks Dean.

Seamus scowls at him, like he's asked to fuck his mother or something. "_No, _I don't want to _talk_."

"Well, fine then," Dean mutters. Seamus kicks into his shoes and leaves for breakfast.

It's obvious Seamus has a lot to say. Constantly he looks about to burst with anger, going everywhere stony-faced and sulking these days. Dean barely recognizes the old Seamus under all these layers of angst. Being with him used to be like befriending a hurricane, always overtaken by whatever passion was at hand, forever being tossed about in his wake of movement and chatter.

Dean and the others used to joke about it, poking fun at old first-year Seamus who never shut up, until Seamus replied to him in quiet confidence once, "I sort of thought that if I did, you might find something else to do."

And Dean thought, _Jesus_. Seamus said things like that sometimes, terribly sad thoughtful things that you never expected to come out of the mouth of someone who had been paid a galleon by Fred Weasley to drink pumpkin juice mixed with gravy at dinner three hours before. All matter-of-fact like it was nothing. Dean just said something like "Huh" and let it go, but it wouldn't leave his mind for the rest of that evening, feelings condensing a little more into an uncomfortable knot in his stomach each time he looked at Seamus or thought of him. The odd muddle of empathy and discomfort that accompanied the revelation that someone else's experiences were just as full and real as his own.

He needs to remember this sometimes, though it overwhelms him. Seamus doesn't exist to be his friend, he's a person in his own right who feels things in his own way, who changes and grows just like he does.

Looking after him out the door, Dean wonders if they could grow apart. New angry Seamus is so foreign to him, so different, that he doesn't know how to be his friend. The best he can do is respect him and not pry. He can be supportive in silence, a soothing presence that hopefully Seamus will trust enough someday to be open.

New Seamus and his silence must no longer fear desertion, Dean muses. At least in that way he's done well as a friend.


	17. Jagged

**17\. Jagged**

Dean swore loudly as he skidded down the rocky slope, throwing out his hands to break his fall. Immediately he looked around in panic. Outside of the wards they usually kept their voices to whispers, if they spoke at all. He heard rustling footsteps on the ridge above him and fumbled for his wand. Gripping it in his scraped palm, he got to his feet and found himself with Gornuk at wandpoint.

Gornuk held up his open hands. "Sorry," mumbled Dean.

"Do you need me to help you?" asked Gornuk in his gravelly voice.

"Er, no." Dean climbed back up the shallow slope. It made his hands sting but he had always been too uncomfortable around the goblins for more than the most detached formalities. "I've got it, see?"

"I see," Gornuk said. His eyes flickered to Dean's cut hands. "You're bleeding." Before Dean could say "I'm fine," Gornuk reached out and wrapped his wrinkled hands around one of his. Dean's first instinct was to recoil, but a cool sensation enveloped his hand like he'd dipped it in water. Gornuk released him and he turned his palm up. The scrapes were gone.

"Healing magic is one of the first things that goblins learn," said Gornuk. "I hear it is not that way with wizards."

Dean offered his other hand. "I wish it were. They can be impractical."

"_You_ can," said Gornuk coolly.

And Dean winced. Both of them had always been outcasts, but one more than the other.

"Yeah," he said, "er, I suppose."

…

"I'm fine—let go of me, I'm fine—"

"You are _not _fine," Parvati hissed. "Oh, would you look at all this blood…"

Seamus tried to wrench his arm from her grip as she pulled him down the corridor. "I'm not dead, am I?"

Ginny hurried ahead of them to give the Fat Lady the password. Parvati tried to help Seamus through the portrait hole but he pushed her off and climbed through on his own. The others had been waiting for them. Lavender gasped as he collapsed next to her on the couch.

"It was a cutting curse, not that bad," he said, pausing to hiss as he peeled his shirt off his bloody stomach. "It was Goyle, after all."

"Bloody menace," snapped Ginny.

"Can anyone heal cuts?" asked Lavender, looking from Ginny, to Neville, to the audience of younger years. A couple people shook their heads, the rest remained silent. "That's it," she said, "tomorrow I'm going to learn—"

Seamus huffed, embarrassed. "I'll do fine with a bandage until I can see Pomfrey."

He leaned his head back as Ginny summoned a flat sheet and obediently lifted his torso for Neville to wrap strips around. He always hated this feeling. It was as if his mother was babying him again, or Dean was trying to look out for him like it was his job.

His heart ached to think of his mother, and even more to think of Dean. He focused on the stinging pain in his stomach instead.

…

"You—now you," said Fleur after Harry left, floating over to him. "Your face looks 'orrible."

Dean blinked sleepily. He had almost forgotten that he was bruised and beaten, he was so numbed by the chill coast air. "Don't worry about it."

She lifted his chin and tutted anyway. He wanted to pull away, but the plush armchair he was sitting in seemed to have some kind of a hold on him. He rolled his head to the side and sank deeper into the cushions.

"Come on now," said Fleur.

Fleur Delacour. He'd have to tell Seamus. She whispered a spell that relieved the throbbing in his forehead and spread some cool cream on his cuts, and he wondered what Seamus was doing at that very moment.

"Healing magic is one of the first things goblins learn," he mumbled absently, focused on clinging to consciousness.

"Mm-hmm," said Fleur.

He fell asleep.

…

It hurt when he collided with Dean but he didn't care, clinging to him with all the strength he had. He felt Dean's hearty laugh against his chest and felt his feet lift for a second from the floor.

Harry was talking and it was important, but he didn't care about that either. His hand hung loosely at Dean's neck as Dean studied him, frowning deeply.

"What happened to you?" he whispered.

"I've…been a pain in the arse," admitted Seamus.

"I thought I told you not to do anything stupid," said Dean.

Seamus fondly rubbed his shoulder. "Don't tell me what to do."

Dean gave him a desperate look, full of questions, longing for his story.

"Later," said Seamus under his breath.


	18. Jubilant

**18\. Jubilant**

"Weasley and Chang now neck and neck—don't be rough, girls—Chang makes a grab for it, misses…"

Dean ducked as Ginny and Cho zoomed over him in pursuit of the snitch. He tried to do the numbers in his head. If Ginny caught it now, they'd be one-fifty plus three hundred, whereas Ravenclaw had…

"This is the best part of Quidditch, folks! The snitch looks like it's getting ahead—oh, no…"

He had stopped to watch. This was what made him a lousy teammate, he supposed. He could hear Ginny yelling at him now: "_The match is still going on, you_ _idiot_!" But, oblivious to him, she sped on.

"And—does Weasley have it? SHE DOES! Weasley with the snitch, and GRYFFINDOR WINS!"

The crowd exploded in cheers. Demelza careened into him and hugged him tightly from her broom. Dean watched Ginny swoop around in a victory lap, proud of her, but sad.

"Four hundred fifty to one hundred forty, and if I'm not mistaken that means Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup!

Whooping and throwing their brooms aside, the rest of the Gryffindor team converged in the center of the pitch. "WE DID IT!" Jimmy Peakes was screaming. He bounced into Ginny. "YOU DID IT!"

Dean shared hugs all round but he didn't feel that exhilaration that sport always made him feel. Perhaps he was just the outsider. Identifying with a team was what made victory exciting, and here he was taking a spot that shouldn't have been his, again.

"Let's have another round of applause for the Gryffindor team, please: Weasley, Bell, Robins…"

* * *

The team was greeted in the Gryffindor common room by the early stages of a party. There was a radio on, and someone had made a trip to the kitchens. Whoever could get their hands on them were clapping their backs. Dean split off easily toward the table of drinks. It would be easier to enjoy the celebration in a different crowd.

A loud whistle sounded in his ear and he turned to see Seamus grinning wolfishly, fingers still between his teeth. "Great match," he said.

"Am I glad to see you," said Dean. Everything was easier with him.

Seamus sighed. "You cheer up," he ordered, pressing a glass of punch into Dean's hand. "You've just won the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor."

"I'm not even really on the team," Dean said.

Seamus rolled his eyes. "Oh, alright, you git, you played in the match that won the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor."

Giving in and flashing a smile, Dean sipped his drink. "That I was, I suppose."

"And you will go down in history. Name in the trophy room, or whatever the—"

Another great wave of cheers rose up from by the portrait hole; Harry must have returned. Dean turned away and tried to hide his face in the crowd. Harry hadn't seemed to pleased to ask him back on the team, and avoiding confrontation seemed best to preserve his burgeoning good mood. "So what are we drinking?" he asked Seamus hurriedly, forcing another grin.

But Seamus's face had gone slack. "Oh, blimey," he said amid gasps, "don't look."

Dean looked, of course. Over the heads of the crowd he could see Ginny and Harry kissing fiercely in each other's arms. Something cold and unexplainable filled him. His fist clenched around his flimsy glass and it broke, shards littering the carpet and piercing his skin.

"Dean…" said Seamus. Dean just hissed in pain.

He accused her of loving Harry once. He was angry and insecure and she called him as much, she acted offended at the very thought. But the time they'd been broken up wasn't enough for this to have begun. She must have wanted him then, at least a little. Ginny could be with whomever she wanted now, he knew that, but it still hurt to know he'd been lied to.

Seamus nudged him softly and said, "Let's go."


	19. Kindly

**19\. Kindly**

Seamus looked down into the scrunched little face. Filled with a new anxiety at holding something so fragile, he shifted his arms. "He's heavier than I thought he'd be."

"Yeah, he's a chubby little bugger," said Ginny. She reached over and tickled her baby's nose. "Isn't that right, Jamie?"

James yawned. Seamus studied him, unsure what else to do with the child in his arms. "What do I do now?"

"Just hold him," said Ginny. "Or I can take him back, if you want. But he's being good for you."

At his back, Dean slipped an arm around him and under James. "His head. You want to keep his head supported, like this." Perhaps he had known Seamus felt rather in need of support himself.

"Have you ever thought about children?" Ginny asked. When they looked at her she shook her head and laughed. "I hate to be that person, you know, but I think you ought to give the idea a chance. You'd be good."

Seamus waited for Dean's answer, almost fearful of what he might hear, but Dean didn't reply. He just chuckled faintly, rumbling against Seamus's back.

* * *

As they washed their hands under the same stream of water in the Potters' bathroom, Seamus said, "I can't get it out of my head."

"What?" said Dean.

"What Ginny said," said Seamus. He pulled his hands from the sink and grabbed the towel anxiously. "I… Do you want kids?"

Dean froze with his lips parted for a few thoughtful moments and then asked, "Do you?"

"No." It was relieving to say. Never in the years they'd been together had they even touched on the issue, just keeping on as they'd done when they were twenty, but everyone around them was growing up and it couldn't be avoided any more. "I always thought I would," Seamus continued, "but it doesn't feel right—it scares me."

"I think…" Dean left it there for a long time, busying himself shutting off the water and straightening the towels.

"What do you think?" Seamus hissed. "Just tell me already."

"I think you'd be a better father than you think you would," said Dean.

Seamus's chest constricted. "You do," he said softly. "I knew I shouldn't have said—"

"I want what you want," Dean said. "Don't worry about disappointing me, because—"

"Have an _opinion_!" snapped Seamus. His heart stopped and they both quickly looked at the door, expecting someone to burst in on them any second. "This is your life!" he went on in a whisper. "You can't just do what _I _want; I can't let you, I dunno, resent—"

"Alright!" Dean raised his hands. "You want my opinion? I think we're happy as we are." Seamus opened his mouth and then closed it tightly as Dean silenced him with a deep stare. "But if the time comes when we're not happy alone," he said tenderly, "I don't want you to close off the possibility just because you're scared. I think you'd be a great parent if you wanted to be."

"Well," said Seamus awkwardly, "I still don't. Not yet."

"And that's all that needs to be said," said Dean. He briefly reached out for Seamus's shoulder before opening the bathroom door.


	20. Killing

**20\. Killing**

Seamus is lying on the cot with his eyes closed but Dean can tell he isn't sleeping. He's in one of his moods. It's been like this for months now, and Dean had thought it was some late reaction to the war sinking in, the way half the people they know have been failing to cope. He had not known the extent to which Seamus had been failing to cope.

Neville called him in. "They sent me to tell him they needed to let him go, because I'm the closest to him and they didn't think he'd take it well," he said as he led him through the tangle of corridors to the Aurors' facilities. "And he didn't really. He kept shouting at Harry. Something about how he was crazy to do this, after what he'd been through. We had to give him a calming draught."

"Why did they fire him?" asked Dean.

"He wasn't getting better," said Neville, "and it was just getting to be a liability."

"Better from what?"

Neville looked over at him, mouth open awkwardly. "I… The panic attacks. I thought you'd know."

Dean did not know.

At his side in the infirmary, Neville says to Seamus, "I brought Dean."

"Why'd you have to fuckin' do that?" Seamus mumbles. Dean now knows that it hadn't just slipped his mind; Seamus had consciously decided not to admit what he was going through.

"Someone needs to take you home," says Neville.

"I can take myself home."

Neville shuts up and looks to Dean. He doesn't know what to do either; he's too busy feeling like a failure of a friend. He looks back only when he hears the door close. Neville has left them alone.

"Why didn't you say anything?" asks Dean, tentatively, trying to hold his hurt back. "If I knew what was happening—"

"Because you'd have come to sit at my bedside like you're my bleedin' Mam." Seamus rolls his head away from him on the pillow.

"I'm not your mother," says Dean.

"You're acting like it," says Seamus. "I don't need your help."

Dean sits down on the bed near Seamus's knees. "Sounds like you need somebody's."

"All I have to do is not run after people who want to kill me," Seamus says. "I don't care anymore, fuck the Aurors. It's not my responsibility to clean up the whole damn wizarding world's mess." Dean understands what he's trying to get at. They've been through enough war, they did their time.

"Is that what you told Harry?" he asks.

Seamus groans. "I don't understand him. That life, hating it so much, and he chooses to just…keep doing it. Madman, I always knew."

"Then why'd you keep going so long after you started getting—"

It is as if any progress Dean made is reversed in that second. "Mind your own fucking business."

He looks away and lifts his head, staring out into space. Seamus exhales sharply and shifts over in the bed.

"I remember in the woods," says Dean. "I froze up, my chest felt like it had a huge weight on it. I couldn't think or do anything—couldn't help, and they died."

Seamus doesn't say anything, not that Dean really expected him to.

"I just mean that it's understandable," he says. "It's a stressful situation, it's not surprising that it triggers—"

"Then why don't the others get it?" snaps Seamus furiously. "Harry, and Ron, they've been through ten times what I have, and they duel perfectly fine without losing it. There's only one explanation, Dean, I am _fucking_ weak!"

If Seamus is weak, Dean thinks, then he is weaker. He didn't even attempt to confront the war. He fucked off into the Muggle world and never looked back.

"This isn't for people like me," says Seamus slackly. "This is for people who were in Vietnam, or some shite. I… I just…"

Dean doesn't know what to do. He lays down beside Seamus on the bed and sighs.


	21. Lost

**21\. Lost**

"Why would you want to do that?" they ask him at the DA parties when he says he's taking Muggle art classes. He just shrugs after the first time. He's tired of trying to explain how he still doesn't feel at home in the world he fought for, how magic never seemed like a real way of life and more like something he would come home from at the end of the day.

He's in the back alley lighting up his pipe this time because this get-together will be better when he's stoned when the door out of the Leaky opens again. He glances up and sees Justin Finch-Fletchley in peacoat and Burberry scarf. "H'lo," mutters Dean.

"Hi," says Justin. From his inner pocket he fishes out a Muggle cigarette and flicks a lighter.

Dean asks, "When'd you pick that up?"

"Abroad," says Justin. "Last year."

"Right."

"You were in hiding, weren't you?" he asks.

Dean puffs haughtily on his pipe. "Not all of us can swan off to America at the drop of a hat."

"I know," says Justin.

They smoke in silence. Dean contemplates Justin as he lounges against the brick wall, the chill breeze ruffling his blond hair.

He asks, "How are your classes?"

"Good," says Dean.

"My dad got me a job with his campaign," says Justin. "No one understands it either."

Dean hums in sympathy.

"But wizarding jobs, they don't feel real, you know?" Justin continues. "I don't…_feel _like a wizard sometimes. Do you get that? I'm magic, but I'm no _wizard_."

Breathing out a plume of smoke, and maybe because he's starting to feel it, Dean meets Justin's eyes for the first time. "I get it."

He and Justin start spending time lost together in London, Muggle and magical. Seamus doesn't seem to have much to say on the matter. He's too busy lounging about after Auror training, which must drain his energy something terrible. Dean doesn't know what he expected: some bother, some Seamus being Seamus, like when he started hanging out with Ginny.

As he and Justin are discussing their closets of magic things, that part of their lives hidden away in case company comes, Dean mentions, "Seamus wants to live somewhere where we don't have to hide someday."

"I can't imagine you out of the city," says Justin.

Dean is warmed unexpectedly by how well Justin understands him already. "I know. I don't want to leave."

"You don't have to live with him, do you?"

The question surprises Dean. He's never considered living alone, or just being without Seamus. He imagines an endless school summer. "I've never thought about it."

"If you want different things, it just makes sense," says Justin. "That's all I'm saying."

"Yeah."

Justin leans back in his chair and gives him this _smile_, and Dean can't tell what it's supposed to mean, but he thinks he knows what he wants it to.


	22. Listless

**22\. Listless**

Since he left the aurors Seamus lies about and has the television on all day but doesn't really watch it. He sleeps until one or two or three and smokes lazily in the afternoon. Dean has a hard time leaving him alone. Seamus has always been full of life so he is either hiding anger and hurt or he has been so fundamentally changed as a person that they are not there at all. Both fill Dean with fear. And then there's the guilt that's lingered ever since, that he'd been too busy and oblivious to notice Seamus failing to keep his head above water.

He doesn't see Justin for a while because he is isolating himself, punishing himself. When he gives in and needs another person, one who isn't shuffling round like a zombie, he finds he doesn't know how to explain himself. They have sex again instead. He stays the night but rushes home when he wakes in the early morning to check that Seamus is still alive.

"You love him," whispers Justin.

When he is on his knees beside Seamus, asleep on the sofa, one hand gently on his back to feel the rise and fall of breath, Dean wonders if he is right.

He tries to engage Seamus in conversations, asks the plot of television shows but rarely gets more than "I dunno." It's better when they get high together because at least then he sometimes laughs.

* * *

"You have class today," says Seamus weakly, his just-woken voice cracked and hoarse.

Dean is reading in his bedroom. "It got canceled."

"No it didn't," says Seamus. He rolls over and goes back to bed.

He is tired of this but too tired to say so. Everything he wants to say to Dean would become an argument, and he hasn't got it in him to think or to care. All he's got in him is enough to be his roommate's burden. He knows Dean thinks he'll kill himself, and he won't be reassured to know he's just too scared to.

All the hatred toward his own weakness and the world's pity has burned out into idle regret, eating him up and no way to fight it or get it out. Dragging Dean down only makes it worse.

He's heard his mother and Dean talking on the phone when they think he's asleep and wonders whether he ought to go back home. He's not doing anything here. But his mam would be loads more intrusive than Dean is. He's glad she hasn't stormed down and brought him back to Ireland herself. She must trust Dean. Maybe that's why he's been acting this way, to avoid the wrath of Nora Finnigan.

Or maybe Dean is just being Dean and caring about him too much. Some days Seamus wishes he'd go back to fucking Justin Finch-Fletchley day and night and not giving a damn. The attention used to make him feel special but now that he's a liability he needs Dean to fuck off for his own good.

It's his own way of caring, he supposes.


	23. Into the Fire

**23\. Into the Fire**

_A typed letter on crisp parchment, embossed with the Ministry of Magic logo:_

Dear Mr. Thomas,

Recent studies by the Department of Mysteries on the nature of inherited magical ability have determined that magical talent can only be passed through blood inheritance. "Muggle-born" witches and wizards, previously thought to be an inexplicable yet existent phenomenon, cannot be a natural product of Muggle/Muggle couplings.

Our records indicate that you have no magical relatives from whom you could have received the gift of magical ability. In compliance with an order issued this morning, August 2nd by Minister of Magic Pius Thicknesse, all self-identified "Muggle-born" wizards and witches are to present themselves before the Muggle-Born Registration Commission for questioning. Your assigned date of interview is August 6th at 10:00 a.m. If you fail to attend, you will be considered a fugitive from the Ministry and will be treated as such.

Cordially,

Head of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission,

Dolores J. Umbridge

* * *

"What's with you?" asked Sara.

Dean looked up toward his bedroom doorway, wishing for once for a shred of privacy.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Whatever," she said, and left.

* * *

_A phone conversation, 3:34 pm, August 2, 1997:_

Dean: _Seamus_?

Seamus:_ I know you don't get the Prophet but there's shit that's been happening, mate, I want you to come over here._

Dean: _The Muggle-Born stuff? I got a letter._

Seamus: _What do they want from you?_

Dean: _I'm supposed to come in and "present myself for questioning."_

Seamus: _You're not going to, right?_

Dean: _I don't know, Seamus._

Seamus: _You know they mean to charge you with a crime, don't you?_

Dean: _If I could just find proof, you know, about my dad—_

Seamus: _But what if you can't?_

Dean: _Do you want me to just go into hiding, is that what you want?_

Seamus: _This is a war, Dean. We've got to do someth—_

Dean: _Look, my mum's got home, I'll think about it and talk to you later._

Seamus: _Dean—_

* * *

Sara was sprawled on her bed alone when he knocked on the door of the room she shared with Beth. She rolled her head over and asked, "What do you want?"

"I have something I've got to tell you," said Dean. "I don't know what to say to Mum."

She snorted. "Get someone pregnant?"

"No," he said. "I've got to leave. Go into hiding."

Sara scrutinized him, trying to work out whether or not he was joking, face going slack when he remained serious. "What the fuck'd you do, Dean?"

He sat down on the end of her bed. "There's stuff happening in the wizarding world. There's been a government coup and now they're hunting people like me. Muggle-borns."

"What?"

"Bad stuff's been going on for a while," he said, drawing in a deep sigh. "But I was afraid Mum and Dad would keep me home if I told them."

Sara sat up, watching him with hurt, narrowed eyes.

"You'll have to go someplace too, if they come looking for me," said Dean. "I thought maybe you guys could stay with Uncle Anthony. Until this is over."

"You're planning on running away?" she asked hoarsely. "What the fuck do you know about being a fugitive?"

"I'll work it out," he said. "And if they'll find me I'll fight. I'm okay at that."

"Fighting? With magic?"

He nodded.

"So let me understand," said Sara. "All these years your world's been going to shit, and you didn't care to tell us you were in danger?"

"I know I—"

"Fuck you, Dean," she snapped. "We barely know you at all as it is."

"Well then it'll hurt less if I die," he replied, just as coldly.

She repeated, "Fuck you."

* * *

_A letter written on clean notebook paper and folded twice._

This is the last will and testament of Dean Thomas, age seventeen, August fifth, 1997

Mum and Dad,

Thank you so much for all you've given me, and for all you've supported me. I know it's been hard. Forgive me for keeping so much from you, it was selfish and I regret it. I have nothing important to give you, but know I love you.

Sara, Beth, and Livy,

One of you can have my bedroom, so you can finally all have rooms to yourselves. I know I'm always away at school and barely feel like your brother, but please remember me. I love you all so much.

Seamus,

You can have back the watch you gave me for my last birthday. I hope you think of me when you wear it. Your friendship is the best thing my magic gave me.

I'm not good with words, and I'm sorry. Much love,

Dean


	24. Morbid

**24\. Morbid**

Seamus is gently shaken awake by strong hands and he sits up with a start. He is on the common room sofa. Everyone else has gone to bed by now; it's late and he'd fallen asleep waiting for two people to return. They stand over him now: Ginny and Neville, both ghostly pale even in the low, warm light. "What?" he asks, "was it bad?"

"I guess we knew it was a matter of time," says Ginny, darkly and so cryptically he wants to shake her. He turns to Neville, but notices for the first time he looks like he's in shock. Ginny is gripping his arm.

"What, they try to recruit you?" Seamus asks. "Brainwash you into junior Death Eaters or some shite?"

She shakes her head. "I think they know that'd be a lost cause. No way to deal with us but _Crucio_."

He gives a sharp bark of laughter, refusing to believe. "But that's an unforgivable curse, it's…unforgivable!"

"Wake up, Seamus," snaps Ginny. "They're Death Eaters, they don't give a damn about unforgivable." Unwilling to be spoken to like a child, he bristles, and as she ushers Neville into a seat Seamus glowers at her. But, "Luna too," she says then, making him forget. "Her the worst, because her dad's been so anti-Ministry."

He growls, "I'll kill 'em."

"Me first," says Ginny.

"Listen," Neville says weakly. They both turn quickly, surprised, to look at him. "Maybe we should lay low a little from now on."

"What?" asks Seamus.

Neville shrinks back into the armchair a bit under their scrutiny. "It's just, if they're willing to torture us… That _does things_ to you, Seamus."

"That worse than letting them get away with all their shit?" he sharply replies. Ginny is tugging at his arm, trying to shush him, but he is incensed. He'd have thought she'd be on his side. "No, we can't just back down and let them walk all over us, what are you—"

"That's not what I'm saying." Neville interrupts him, reading his mind. "Just no more pointless sword stunts, alright?"

Seamus looks to Ginny. She had been the driving force behind the sword stunt, and he thought she might have something to say about that, but she's just looking at Neville with some kind of sensitive sadness. Incredulously, he glances between the both of them. "It's not pointless," he insists. "It's—symbolic, it's about _morale_…"

"I think, when it comes down to it," says Ginny, not looking at him, "Harry would want us to survive."

"Fuck Harry." The words come out of his mouth before he's fully realized how harsh that is but he's angry and doesn't care. "Who cares what he thinks? He's off doing nothing for nobody, it's up to us to get things done."

"Seamus—"

"No," he says, "why are we doing everything for some bloke who could be dead for all we know?"

"We'd know if he were dead," Ginny replies, coldly. "It'd be all over the news."

"Not if he starved," says Seamus, making shit up. "Or fell off a cliff, or choked to death—"

Neville interrupts again. "This isn't the time to be morbid."

"I don't _care_." Seamus is so angry he wants to scream, throw something in the quiet of the night. He is so tired of hearing _Harry Potter_'s name, tired of him being held up as their savior when no one had heard from him since the summer. "He's as much use to us dead as he is alive," he spits, "and once you two realize that then maybe we can talk." He flung himself off of the couch. "I'll be in bed."

As he lies behind his curtains he wonders whether Dean would have agreed with him. He doesn't think so, which makes him feel all the worse.


End file.
